Border trade resumes along part of the old Silk Route
It is 44 years since Motilal Lakhotia, 80, crossed the vertiginous Nathu-La Pass into Tibet. Part of the old Silk Route connecting ancient China with India, western Asia and Europe, the 4,545-metre-high track was abruptly closed in 1962 during a fierce border war between India and China. The closure put an end to his thriving business running mules laden with cloth from Sikkim, now part of India, to Lhasa.
Today, Mr Lakhotia and 50 other traders will take part in what he expects to be an "emotional" ceremony marking the reopening of Nathu-La - literally the pass of the listening ear. "I want to see old friends and start trading again," he says, recalling the days when there used to be 200 Indian shops in Yatung, an isolated Tibetan town supplied daily by 5,000 mules from Sikkim.
At the Nathu-La Pass, mist muffles the sound of last-minute preparations - bulldozers fixing the Chinese road to the border, bunting flapping in the wind. Next to the waist-high barbed wire that marks the international border, a sign gives Indian troops translations for a few friendly phrases: "How's the family? Wish you all the best." Until today, the only regular contact between the two armies has been on Sundays and Thursdays when, in continuation of an old military tradition, mail between China and India is handed across the frontier. That will all change now.
The latest attempt to normalise border relations between India and China will allow trade to resume today. Compared with the 1950s it will be severely circumscribed, with India consenting to imports of only 15 goods from Tibet, mostly animal items such as yak tails and goatskins, and China allowing in 29 products, including tea, rice, flour, clothes, shoes, blankets, kerosene and tobacco.
The border post will be open only to local traders, from June 1 to September 30 when the snows have cleared, and from Monday to Thursday. The pass will remain barred to tourists and limits will be imposed on traders. Indians may stay up to 30 days at the border market set up on the Tibetan side, while Chinese must return to Tibet the same day.
If a study for the Sikkim government predicting that Nathu-La trade will reach $1bn (�786m, ￡545m) by 2010 proves accurate, the reopening will play a part in strengthening ties between the regional rivals. Trade between India and China rose 37.5 per cent last year to $18.7bn and is expected to reach $30bn by 2010, when China may have replaced the US as India's biggest trading partner.
Removing the barbed wire at Nathu-La, a two-hour crawl from Gangtok and about 450km from Lhasa and Calcutta, serves an important political purpose for both countries. Coming days after China inaugurated the first Beijing-Lhasa train service, the reopening of Nathu-La would further "help end Tibet's economic isolation", said Hao Peng, the Tibetan autonomous region's vice-chairman.
For India, a resumption of the trade is evidence that China is at last taking concrete steps to reconcile itself to India's 1975 absorption of the Himalayan buffer state. India sees it as a confidence-building measure that will speed up resolution of a seemingly intractable dispute along the length of the Himalayan frontier.
But not everyone is optimistic. Brahma Chellaney, a foreign affairs analyst in New Delhi, warns India not to drop its guard against a country that has shown no serious intention of seeking an early resolution. India, he says, needs to face up to the reality that Beijing sees a strategic benefit in keeping hundreds of thousands of troops pinned down along the Himalayas.
"For 25 continuous years, India has been seeking to settle by negotiation with China the disputed Indo-Tibetan frontier and these are the longest border talks between any two nations in modern history," he wrote recently. "An unsettled border endows China with the option to activate military heat along the now-quiet frontier if India played the Tibet card or entered a military alliance with the US."
For Mr Lakhotia, now is not the moment for geopolitics. There is a market to be seized and the Marwari trading family, which owns a cinema in Gangtok, Sikkim's capital, wants its share. The family's old firm - the Sikkim Tibet Trading Company - is preparing for a new lease of life. "They can't get everything they need from Beijing," he says.
中印重开丝绸之路古道
44
年前，如今已80高龄的莫蒂拉?拉克霍蒂亚(Motilal Lakhotia)曾穿过令人眩晕的乃堆拉山口(Nathu-La Pass)进入西藏。这段海拔高达4545米的通道是连接中国与印度、西亚乃至欧洲的古代丝绸之路的一部分。由于1962年印中爆发了激烈的边境战争，乃维拉山口被突然关闭，使得曾经兴盛一时的锡金（现在是印度的一个邦）向拉萨运送布匹的骡子商队从此消失。
昨天，拉克霍蒂亚和其他50名商人参加乃堆拉山口（字面上的意思是“倾听之耳山口”）“让人动情”的重启仪式。“我想见见老朋友，然后开始重新做生意，”他一边说，一边回忆起过去的时光。当时，在西藏孤镇亚东有200家印度商铺，每天有5000匹来自锡金的骡子为这些商铺运送商品。
在乃堆拉山口，最后时刻的准备工作还在薄雾之中进行――正在维修边境公路中国段的推土机隆隆作响，横幅在风中飘动。在齐腰高的边境铁丝网旁边竖着一块标牌，上面写着对印度军队的友好问候：“家里还好吧？希望你们一切顺利。”在昨天以前，两国军队间唯一的定期接触，就是沿袭一项古老的军队传统，于周日和周四在边境互换中印之间的邮件。如今，这一切都将改变。
尽管边境关系仍然十分紧张，印中最近的边境关系正常化努力，使边境贸易于昨天恢复。与上世纪50年代相比，贸易将受到严格限制。印度仅同意从西藏进口15种商品，主要是牲畜类商品，例如牦牛尾和山羊皮，而中国则允许进口29种产品，包括茶叶、大米、面粉、服装、鞋、毛毯、煤油和烟草。
边哨只对当地商人开放，开放期也选在没有积雪的6月1日至9月30日，每周的开放时间为周一至周四。山口将仍然不对旅游者开放，而且商人的活动也将受到限制。印度商人可在西藏一侧的边境市场最多逗留30天，而中国商人则必须当天返回西藏。
一份提交给锡金政府的研究预测，乃堆拉山口的边境贸易额将在2010年达到10亿美元。如果该预测准确，那么此次重启将发挥重要作用，有助于加强该地区两大竞争对手之间的经济联系。印中贸易额去年跃升了37.5%，至187亿美元，预计到2010年将达到300亿美元。届时，中国将取代美国，成为印度的最大贸易伙伴国。
乃堆拉山口到甘托克(锡金首府)有两小时路程，距离拉萨和加尔各答分别约450公里，拆除乃维拉山口的铁丝网对于两国而言具有重大的政治意义。继中国开通北京至拉萨列车后，西藏自治区副主席郝鹏表示，乃堆拉山口的重启将进一步“帮助结束西藏的经济孤立”。
对印度来说，边境贸易的重启表明，中国终于采取具体措施，接受印度于1975年将喜马拉雅的这个缓冲国(buffer state)纳入印度版图的现实。印度认为，这是一项树立信心的重要措施，将加快解决喜马拉雅边境沿线地区似乎相当棘手的争端。
但并非人人都持乐观态度。新德里领先的外交事务分析师布拉马?切拉尼(Brahma Chellaney)警告说，由于中国没有认真表明及早解决的意愿，印度不应当放弃防范。他表示，印度需要面对一个现实，即北京认为，在喜马拉雅山脉沿线保持几十万驻军具有战略利益。
近日他撰文指出，“25年来，印度一直寻求通过与中国谈判，解决中印具有争议的边界问题，这是现代史上最漫长的边境谈判。悬而不决的边境问题赋予中国一个选择，即如果印度打西藏牌，或与美国结成军事同盟，中国可能在眼下平静的边境施加军事压力。”
对拉克霍蒂亚和他四个儿子而言，现在不是讲地缘政治的时候。他们有一个市场要去占领，这个马尔瓦尔(Marwari)商人家族想要分得一杯羹。该家族在锡金首府甘托克拥有一家电影院，以及一家能饱览干城章嘉峰(Khanchendzonga)美景的酒店。其名下的老牌企业――锡金西藏贸易公司(Sikkim Tibet Trading Company)正准备获得新的生命。“北京不可能向他们供应一切，”他说。
